Well the daughter does at least...

She had an 8130 that was stolen. Looking for an 8230 and actually have a relative who had an 8230 on VZW but switched to a curve because the pearl's screen was too small for them to read.

Daughter wants a BB that she doesn't have to worry about accidentally calling someone as she often "butt dialed" people with here 8130. And she doesn't want to have to unlock the phone all the time (picky picky right).

It sounds totally possible to flash this VZW 8230 with all the required tables for Sprint. Has anyone successfully done this? Then there is still the issue of getting Sprint to activate the ESN but that shouldn't be impossible. Question is if anyone has actually found a vendor that had success flashing a BB from VZW to Sprint and ended up with full data functionality. I found a somewhat local vendor that was confident that the voice portion (incl SMS of course) would be doable but they couldn't promise that data would work.

Thanks for any input!

To the best of my knowledge, a CDMA carrier will not activate a device with an ESN from another carrier.

The problem is the ESN and PIN would not be in the Sprint database and therefore Sprint will not activate it on their network.

But can't you simply do an ESN change online via the website?? The handset is 100% capable if it has the proper data in it to utilize Sprints network.

The PIN... Didn't know that any of those were in Sprint's database, thought PIN in only involved when speaking to RIM's network, and I still don't know why Sprint would care what the PIN number is.

Historically this was easy, I had done it on the older Palm's and even activated in store but that was before data via the mobile network was around. Flashed the Palm with the sprint logo splash screen and the rep in store said "that ESN isn't listed" and all I did was show him the Sprint logo as it powered up and he entered the ESN on the account - all was well.